


Spoils of War

by Rynfinity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 13:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2623787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Make me a puppy," Thor demands, grinning.  He has been begging for a dog for months now, much to his mother’s chagrin.</p>
<p>Loki does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoils of War

"Well, that's done, then," Odin tells himself aloud as he takes a last look around. Even in partial collapse the temple is an awesome space, a sacred space. It is also empty, stripped of its last few remaining relics by the Einherjar who swept through before him and scoured the ruins clean on behalf of their king.

Fortunately there had been, as they had to a man reported – stopping by to collect from him their greatest prize of all, the Casket of Ancient Winters - no need to slay the priest who’d once presided here. The giant, clad only in the simple grey fur chestpiece and loincloth of his ordained service, had already lain dead when they'd arrived… and not a mark on him.

Odin could positively _taste_ his troops’ unease. It had been, in large part, why he'd sent them on ahead to the landing site without him. He wanted one last chance to inspect - with all his many senses, all the great and varied powers at his disposal - this place without any chance of their fear muddying his own perception.

He sniffs deeply. The smells of battle are muted here; there is little scent of ash, or of blood. The empty, vaulted space with its bare altar tucked off to the side smells clean. Crisp. Cold. And it still sparks faintly of seidr.

The dead priest has been carried off to be laid out, Odin's soldiers had assured their king as they’d taken their leave, with peers and kin. Honorably, in a manner befitting his station.

Consequently, Odin knows, none of what’s happening now makes sense. In fact, it's very odd; he can't shake the feeling that _someone is watching._

Short sword - it's hardly more than a dagger, perfect for close quarters - at the ready and Gungnir in his other hand, Odin turns slowly about. Though he has not yet adjusted fully to the loss of the eye, he knows his other senses are all the sharper for it.

There. _There_. There it is, in the corner behind the altar. He cannot see the creature, hidden as it is amongst the deep shadows, but the faint electric hum of its seidr reveals it just the same.

"Show yourself," Odin orders, but in the old tongue. This is a place of worship, after all. "Come forward in peace and I shall not harm you,"

Nothing - no one? - comes forth. He steps one step closer, unleashing just a hint of his own power, and feels its seidr flare again.

"Gu," the thing says, and then it _cries_.

Not like a woman, nor a man hurt. Not even like a child. Not like a wounded beast.

No, it wails like a babe. A hungry one at that.

"Is this a trick," the king asks the cold air around him. "Does something mean to lure me to my demise?"

"Ga," says the thing. It hiccoughs, then, on the tail of another wet sob. "Gu?"

Odin sighs loudly. He takes one long, slow last look around, pushing with his own seidr until the damaged walls of ice and stone creak in protest. "Fine," he huffs, to essentially no one. Weapons still to hand, he steps up to the altar and leans forward to see around behind it.

"Gah!"

Odin calls Gungnir to bring a hint of light.

On a nest of fur, otherwise hidden fully by the breadth of the altar itself, is a naked blue baby. Small in size like an elf, or an Aes; ridged and red-eyed like a Jotnar. "What are you," Odin asks the tiny child, careful to keep his booming voice down. "And who is it left you here?"

"Gah," the baby says, more loudly. Its little blue hands clench into fists and its face crumples into a furious frown. Odin winces; his own time as a parent has taught him just where this is going.

"Shh," he tells it, and then - against all his millennia of better judgment - he sets his weaponry close by and lifts the tiny bundle to his chest. He cringes, bracing for- the attack. The explosion. The temple's full collapse, to crush him and the babe together in its holy ruin.

None of that happens. In fact, nothing happens, except a brief wave of seidr that must emanate from the infant in his own big arms. He holds the little creature in the crook of one elbow and tries his best to shake his other heavy, armored glove free. "Sorry," he tells his wife silently as he resorts to pulling it (blood and soot and gore notwithstanding) the last bit of the way off with his teeth. "Are you not cold," he asks the baby aloud, and then tentatively touches the back of his hand - where his instinctive responses best serve to protect him, should the child burn his skin like the flesh of its evident ancestors – to the tiny face.

And then Odin gasps, not in pain nor in fear but in wonderment. At his touch, the baby turns perfect Aesir pink. The change flows out like dye dropped into water, in concentric ripples whose origin is the point at which his knuckles touch the little thing's (cool, pleasantly soft) skin.

Finally the little being begins to shiver, great wracking whole-body shudders the likes of which the king has seen in dying men, and any choice he might have had is made. Gone.

~

Not ten minutes hence Odin meets his men and women at the landing point. From their vantage point he trusts they cannot see the way his armor, carefully hidden beneath his cloak, is undone and bulging oddly on one side.

"Say nothing," he warns Heimdall quietly as they - a few men the less and one baby the more – arrive at the observatory. "And have someone fetch my queen."

~

"You have brought me _what_ ," Frigga asks. She is dressed for sleeping, her heavy dressing gown pulled hastily overtop her night things and her hair up in a heavy plait.

"A gift," Odin repeats, ignoring Heimdall's quiet snort. "'Tis a baby," he points out as he digs the little creature out from within his tunic, furs and all. "An Aesir baby."

Frigga arches one shapely brow. "That is no Aesir baby. What have you done to- him? Her?"

Odin shrugs. He has never been able to fool her, try though he might. "Nothing save for touching its cheek," he assures her. "And I've not looked to see what its sex might be. It was cold," he pleads, "and time was running away on us."

"Give it here, then," she demands. She squats neatly and rests the baby in the cradle of her thighs. "Hello, little one."

"Gu," says the baby, "gah gah gu." And then it smiles a perfect little bow-shaped, toothless smile.

"You are safe here, little magical one," she tells the smiling baby as she unwraps it. _Him_ , then, as it has a tiny cock and wrinkled nut of a sac betwixt its tiny little legs. "Can you change back for me?" She does something with her own seidr, something so subtle Odin can't quite follow it, and the baby fades slowly back to blue. "By the gods," she intones, looking up at Odin in shock. At the tension in her voice the little creature instantly pinks up again and begins to cry.

"No no," she tells it, tucking its furs closer and hefting the bundle to her bosom. "None of this is any fault of yours. None." She stands, a little awkwardly, still shushing the tiny child. "We should fetch Eir," she tells her husband, "and find out what a little Jotun princeling eats."

"Princeling," Odin echoes. "You mean to keep it, then?"

Frigga frowns at him. "Did you not see his marks," she asks, “before you did whatever it was you did? This is Laufey's son."

~

A Jotun prince, it seems - at least in the comparative famine of wartime - eats most anything put before it. In quantity, too. The child - Frigga has named him Loki, and Odin dares not argue - has an appetite to rival that of the big brother he has not yet met. It is scarcely three weeks before little Loki is plump and smiling, round and cuddly like a proper Aesir heir.

~

"You are to have a baby brother," Odin tells his pouting toddler son as Frigga looks on. "Won't that be lovely?"

"No," Thor insists. "I don't want one."

Odin turns to look at his wife. He rolls his remaining eye. "See," he asks her. "This is what I mean."

Frigga reaches out to pat Thor's pudgy knee. "Why don't we meet him before we decide," she suggests.

"No," Thor insists. "I don’t want him. You can't make me."

Frigga goes to fetch baby Loki all the same, leaving Odin to deal with all the sulking and pouting. He tells her as much when she returns, a wriggling bundle cradled in her arms. "Well, you _are_ the expert in that department," she teases. "There, see? You’re even pouting now. Thor, come see the baby."

"Dada?" Loki smiles up at Thor. "Mama? Gu?"

Thor's round little face lights up. "Pretty," he tells Frigga, carefully patting the fluff of dark hair so unlike his own. "Where did we get him?"

"From the gods, darling," she tells him. "From the gods."

~

"Ow!" By the time Frigga reaches them, playing only a few feet away in the soft grass, Thor is sucking three fingers like his life depends on it and Loki is cowering against the nearest tree. Both boys - for they _are_ boys now: Thor five; Loki to the best of their knowledge around three - are in childish tears, the sort which hover halfway between heartbreak and rage.

"He touched me " Loki huffs. He has the emotions of a young child but is well-spoken far beyond his age. "I told him to stop and he wouldn't."

"Is that true, Thor," Frigga asks, gentle but stern, as she works Thor’s fingers free of his round pink mouth and inspects their (red, but not blistered; her younger son is finally developing a little control) tips. "Be sure to tell your mama the truth," she reminds him. Thor tends to blurt out exactly what happened a little too quickly, actually, but even at this tender age Loki is cagey and she strives for equality of treatment wherever possible.

"He burnt me," Thor wails.

"And do you know why your brother might have done such a thing," Frigga asks, keeping one eye on Thor and the other on Loki.

"I touched him," Thor admits sadly. "But mama, he is so squishy!"

"Oh, that _is_ a problem," Odin says cheerfully as he walks over to join them. These gardens are his wife's, his queen's, but they're undeniably lovely and he does like spending time with his little family here. "My son," he continues, addressing Thor but watching Loki's stubborn expression closely, "you must be strong. I assure you: If you touch everything you find appealing, you will sorely regret it."

Thor snuffles loudly. "I do sorely regret it," he agrees. "Very sorely."

"And you," Odin says to Loki, all the while trying his best not to laugh at his eldest. "You cannot burn your way to happiness."

"But he touched me," Loki exclaims.

"Give him time," Frigga reminds Odin. "He is young."

He rests a hand on her shoulder. "They must reach peace between them," he tells her. He knows the prophecies; he would yet see them undone.

"By the Norns," she says quietly, "they are tiny boys, my love. Do not try to make them men." He can feel her shiver against his palm. "They have all eternity for that."

"I only want them to _have_ all eternity," he assures her.

"He did touch me," Loki points out, loudly.

"I know, baby," Frigga tells him. "I know."

~

"Look," Loki cries. "I can make a bird!" And he can. It springs forth from his cupped palms and flies away, dissolving some yards away in a shower of purple and green sparks.

At this age Thor - not quite ten, and still completely at a loss as to how to wield his own elemental magic - can finally appreciate (and yet still appreciates; it is a fine line) his brother's craft.

"Make me a puppy," Thor demands, grinning. He has been begging for a dog for months now, much to his mother’s chagrin.

Loki does. They both laugh when it, too, flies.

_Ah, to be young again_ , Odin thinks. But he isn't sure he means it.

~

Whenever the boys talk about raiding Jotunheim, about killing the monsters, Frigga makes sure to not only intercept them but to chastise them as well.

The influence of their friends, though - Thor's friends, really; Loki is happy on his own and doesn't interact unless pushed - is too strong. She hates it, but it seems she hasn't got within her what power might be required to counteract it.

"Never let me hear you speaking like that," she tells the two of them after young Fandral says something particularly regrettable. "The Jotnar have different customs, but it is not our place to judge."

The both of them pout and frown.

In her mind's eye Frigga sees only her little blue, ridged baby.

~

"What is it, dearest," she asks quietly when Odin - who prides himself on his stoicism, and always has, even when recently awakened much like today - cannot stop crying. "Tell me."

"Loki- fell," he tells her, voice breaking. "I did not mean- I could not- I fear that he is lost to us forever."

Frigga closes her eyes for a long moment. "Never give up hope," she says. "We must be strong. He will return. I know it."


End file.
